Reflections on Jens Voigt's Hour Record

Who Can Save the Hour?

A bike rider, a pole lane and a watch.  

Those parts never change.

Yesterday, in the final chapter of a storied career that has been defined by daring raids, Jens Voigt claimed what may just be his greatest coup: the Hour Record.

He certainly had some outside help, as the UCI’s bizarre muddying of their own waters meant that to join the Hour’s Hall of Heroes he had to beat not one of cycling’s greats but rather a shady Czech who hadn’t had aero bars.

While Voigt’s record is certainly a worthy capstone to his career, you do get the impression that even Voigt knows he has snuck his way onto the record book.  Fitting, as so many of his great victories were accomplished in hail-mary moves that few believed would succeed.

But the Hour Record used to be something more, something better.  For most of the men who have held the hour have been the sports greats. Titans who rode the hour to confirm their place amongst cycling’s Pantheon. Coppi held the Hour.  Anquetil held the Hour.  Merckx defined what it meant to ride the Hour. Public demand pretty much forced Indurain to ride it in the 90’s- his legacy was not complete without it.  It is no accident that of the five time tour winners, three have held the Hour (if I ever meet Hinault I will ask him why he has not)

How I imagine the response

If the Hour Record seems close to my heart it is because the period when I was first getting into cycling in the mid-nineties saw the Hour under assault on an epic scale.  At an age when sporting heroes and deeds have greater shine and luster Boardman captivated me in particular, but equally astounding was the wild-card nature of Obree who dared to assault Cycling’s Mount Olympus not once but twice. 

Such was the furor raised by these two Brits (perhaps forbearers of what was to come for British Cycling) that two of the biggest names in the sport at the time were eventually lured in to restore order: five time tour winner Miguel Indurain and Tony Rominger.  Rominger was perhaps the best modern rider to never win the tour and he in particular assaulted the hour with meticulous detail.  Such was Rominger’s confidence that he became the first rider since Moser to attack his own record: establishing the bar dizzyling high at 55.29 km in 1994.

At the time most of us believed that the fireworks were over, that surely Rominger had put the record out of reach for years to come and that order had been restored to the Hour.

But less than two years later, Chris Boardman, at probably the height of his physical powers smashed that record, riding the improbably distance of 56.37 km.  In doing so he averaged 4:15 pursuit pace for 60 minutes.  Each of those 4km splits would have been good enough to qualify for the World Championships gold medal pursuit final that year- more than 14 times in a row.

This was clearly the biggest concern of the UCI in '96

To say the UCI panicked would probably be accurate.  They banned the superman position, and they banned Boardman’s Lotus designed frame.  But they made a false assumption- that the machine made the man.  In doing so they felt they needed to move the goalposts so that the record would ever again be attainable.

So they pulled their woolen berets over their eyes, pretended it had all never happened and reset the clock to the great Eddy Mercx (ironically whose attempt at altitude had been the culmination of the science of the day). 

And in doing so they ruined the Hour.  It lost its prestige, its very defining characteristic as the leading edge of the sports progression of man and machine.

Sweet fixie man

The Hour had always been a magical mix of applied science and preparation and sheer simple brutality.  As Obree put it “There is you, a black line, a watch, and nothing else.  Succeed and you are a legend, fail and it will haunt you for years.”

Riders like Moser had pushed the ragged edge of the sports boundaries (in more ways that one as him and Dr. Conconi saw it as the ultimate application of science, medicine and technology).  No longer was this the case, and the lack of interest in the record for 15 years has shown.

The great Chris Boardman was wheeled out to again set the record, and valiantly pushed the mark a teensy smidge past Mercx’s old mark.  But this wasn’t just Boardman without the bike, this was a Boardman in the shadow of his own career- neither man nor machine were what they had been in 1996.

Hopefully Voigt’s ride will inspire a new generation to again try and push the sporting limits of the hour- and in doing so push man’s own limit.  But it is hard for me to be inspired by Voigt’s ride when he failed to even beat the 30 year old mark of Moser- set outdoors, on a concrete track and without aero bars.

Conconi aside this can't have been a faster set up

But at least under the new rules the door is open.  56.37km is there for the taking for he who would dare.  Boardman’s pursuit record of 4:11, set on the same bike and the same track as his Hour eventually fell.  And so two will his Hour.  Man and machine will continue to march forwards despite the best efforts of the UCI.

I just hope a rider emerges to push the new “unified” record past the historical marks and return to Hour to its former glory from the sham it has become.

 I'm partisan who I think it should be

Caveat: there is a women’s Hour as well, currently held by Van Moorsel that is also now ripe for the taking under the Unified Rules.

Caveat 2: it’s been pointed out there is also an unlimited funny bike Hour Record- but I would contend that not being set by the sports stars (unless their is a huge underground recumbent racing scene I am ignorant of) makes it void of the Hours romance and prestige.